Recent News

Real Madrid says it has reached a sponsorship deal with American software giant Microsoft. In a brief statement, the club said the deal will be signed by Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and Microsoft vice president Orlando Ayala.

In an official announcement, Microsoft stated that Nokia Lumia devices running on Windows 8 will go on to get an upgrade to Windows 10. This was announced on the official Microsoft Lumia Twitter account, as a response to a customer’s question. The company says Microsoft 10 will unify all Microsoft devices across form factors. Apart from PCs, laptops and smartphones, the new operating system will be available on gaming consoles and wearables.

Microsoft has released a test version of Skype that lets people make Internet calls from web browsers, eliminating the need to install special applications. “It’s perfect if you prefer using the web rather than an app: perhaps you’re sitting at a computer that doesn’t already have Skype downloaded,” Microsoft said in a blog post. Skype for Web will be available to a small number of existing users at first and will be rolled out globally in the coming months, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft released both Visual Studio 2015 Preview and .NET 2015 Preview with a free Visual Studio Community 2013, Visual Studio 2013 Update 4, and an expansion of Visual Studio Online, among several other updates. The newly added tools in Visual Studio 2015 Preview for Windows Presentation Foundation development include Visual Diagnostics tool, Timeline tool and a revamped Blend designer experience.

The bull run in Microsoft’s stock this year has helped the tech giant surpass Exxon Mobil and seize the rank of the second most valuable company, behind Apple Inc. Under new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has pledged to return the focus on mobile technology and cloud computing. His efforts have fuelled a stock surge that drove Microsoft’s total market value above $410 billion leapfrogging Exxon’s value of $404 billion.

It has been a month since Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced setting up local data centres in India. The move comes at a when both government and private majors are getting concerned about data security and sovereignty. Karan Bajwa, managing director of Microsoft India, says, “The government, Reserve Bank, and others, will have to go through a change in the policy environment. We are working with these people and educating them about the public cloud.”

Microsoft has decided to spend Rs 1,400 crore on setting up three data centres in the country. In a filing with the Registrar of Companies, the US software giant said it has started work on setting up the cloud data centres in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. “The biggest cloud data centres we have globally are capable of handling 600,000 servers in just one region. That’s a massive amount of compute. Increasing this scale helps us in being more competitive,” corporate vice president for Microsoft Azure Jason Zanders said.

It has been a month since Satya Nadella made his first visit to India as CEO of Microsoft and announced setting up local data centres. In a recent interview, Karan Bajwa, MD, Microsoft India, talked about Microsoft’s plans to setup local datacenters and the regulatory hurdles in India that hinders the growth of cloud. Bajwa said, “The government, Reserve Bank, etc, will also have to go through a change in the policy environment on the public cloud, a natural process everybody will have to go through. Those are people we are working with, also to educate them about the public cloud.”

Seeing a $2 trillion promise in India’s cloud market, Microsoft has decided to spend Rs 1,400 crore on setting up three data centres in the country. For Microsoft, India is the fastest growing cloud market with earning of Rs. 2,261 crore in FY13-14. Jason Zanders, Corporate VP, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft said, “The biggest cloud data centers we have globally are capable of handling 600,000 servers in just one region. That’s a massive amount of compute. Increasing this scale helps us in being more competitive.”

In the first step to make Surat a smart city, Microsoft will soon set up an incubation centre in the city that will develop applications for a number of civic services. The Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) has agreed to provide space and bear the capital expenditure for the centre. Microsoft will run Appathon, a marathon of applications, which will provide quick and sustainable solutions for as many as eight basic services like drainage, sewerage and water supply.